Her abandonment apparently was not a fixed point in time, as there were several different accounts of the event. The first three incarnations of the Doctor were all involved in different sets of experiences surrounding the crew's disappearance, though only the Second Doctor knew that he was on the ill-fated vessel.

A fourth history put the Third Doctor into the mix. When he landed the TARDIS on the New York docks, the crew of the Mary Celeste mistook it for cargo and had it loaded on board. To regain access to his ship, the Doctor paid for passage on the Mary Celeste. When he showed Professor Theodore Cassells the TARDIS interior, he fled from the hold to the deck. When he tried to tell Captain Briggs what he had seen, the Captain Briggs misunderstood and thought the TARDIS was a time bomb. He, Cassells and the crew left the Mary Celeste in a lifeboat, which was swamped by a large wave that drowned everyone on it. The Doctor left, unaware of the name of the ship he was on. (COMIC: A Stitch in Time)

In reality, the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste remains a mystery.

The nameplate of the abandoned ship, identifying it as the Mary Celeste. (TV: The Chase)

On the DVD release of The Chase, the production notes commentary indicates that although some feel the nameplate seen in the episode is misspelled, the spelling used is actually correct. Though Mary is technically correct, Marie was popularised when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the first fictional account of the ship and misspelled the name. This account became ubiquitous when some 19th centurynewspapers mistook Conan Doyle's fiction for fact. Through the years, many fictional accounts have traced their way back to Conan Doyle's original account. The net result has been widespread confusion — as expressed in DCOM: The Chase — over whether Mary or Marie is the correct spelling.

Although The Chase is played mostly for laughs, the scene in which the Daleks force the passengers to jump overboard takes on a sombre note as a baby is shown among those falling into the sea, becoming the first baby to presumably die during the course of a televised Doctor Who story.